After months of preparation and testing, tidyhosts are excited to announce our new FreePBX hosting packages. FreePBX is an opensource, IP based, all in one PBX solution built on the very popular Asterisk platform.

Not only is FreePBX easy to use, it is also fully customisable. Out of the box FreePBX comes pre-loaded with many of the normal phone system functions and features that end users would expect, but there are dozens of commercial modules available from the FreePBX store that can be added as the requirements grow.

FreePBX allows customers to use either software or hardware based phones, meaning you can download and install a software based phone onto your device, removing the need for a desk phone. The ability to use a software phone allows you to take calls anywhere in the world which makes the solution ideal for geographically scattered workers.

FreePBX removes the need for expensive ISDN lines and PBX equipment on the customer premises. Having a hosted PBX gives customers flexability, remote working and disaster recovery.

Once the FreePBX server is up and running, customer will need to connect a SIP (Session Initiated Protocol) trunk to their PBX. We can suggest a number of providers that will offer this. All call related charges will be payable to the SIP provider. If you already have your own number which you wish to use on the PBX, then they can be ported over to the SIP provider.

We are also pleased to announce our range of handsets now available from our store. In particular, the Sangoma handsets, which have been built specifically for FreePBX, however most SIP phones will happily work with FreePBX.

Have you ever been handed a device that has previously been configured by someone else and the IP details have disappeared?

We recently came across such a situation and thought we would share the trick we used to gain access to the device, which in turn allowed us to setup a new IP address.

This configuration was carried out on an APC AP7921, we wanted to assign IP 192.168.0.1

Firsty, find out the mac address of the unit, this should be on the back, our example 00 c0 b7 36 5c 62

Connect directly to the device using an Ethernet cable (cross over if required)

Having now found the mac address, we need to tell the arp table what the IP to MAC association should be

Windows commandarp -s 192.168.0.1 00-c0-b7-36-5c-62

Linux commandarp -s 192.168.0.1 00:c0:b7:36:5c:62

Now use ping with a packet size of 113 bytes which will assign the IP set in the ARP command

Windows commandping 192.168.0.1 -l 113

Linux commandping 192.168.0.1 -s 113

Now you should be able to connect using telnet or http and set the new IP address. If you don’t know the password then you will need to use the reset button which usually requires a pin or paper click.

If you have been using virtualisation technologies such as XEN, you would of come across the usage of disk images to store our operating system and data on. To create one of these we run:

dd if=/dev/zero of=mydisk.img bs=1024k count=0 seek=5000

This would have created for me an image which is approximately 5GB in size. And then I format it to an ext3 file-system with:

This command will of create a new disk image, 5GB in size called mydisk.img. This is where Debian will be installed but firstly we need to give the new disk a file sytem type, so we run:

mkfs.ext4 mydisk.img

The problems people may face is when the disk image isn’t formatted by dom0, but instead are formatted by an installer and creates more that one partition inside the image.

usually we can mount the newly formatted disk like this:

mount -o loop mydisk.img /mnt/disk1

But since the image which gets created during the installation process of the VM, has multiple partittions, a simple mount won’t work. This is what happens when we try to mount an image which has multiple partitions:

Since the installer creates multiple partitions inside the image, the normal easy mounting within dom0 will not work:

The ‘u’ flag inside fdisk tells us the partition table sizes in sectors rather than cylinders. From here we will need this information so we can calculate the correct offset.

Calculate the Offset in “Bytes”

In order to mount the two partitions from the image, we need to know the starting Byte from where each partition starts. To calculate this offset, we mulitply the (start_sector * sector_byte_size). So for the Partition 1 we have (1060290 * 512) = 542868480 and for Partition 2 we have (17848215 * 512) = 9138286080.

Now we can use those “Start Byte” values to mount those partitions in two seperate locations:

Sometimes when assembling a raid array, you may find that it is going to take hours, even worse, days to complete. Luckily there are ways to increase the assemble time with some useful commands which should decrease the time considerably.

To increase the rebuild speed, enter:

echo value > /proc/sys/dev/raid/speed_limit_min

OR

sysctl -w dev.raid.speed_limit_min=value

In this example, set it to 60000 K/Sec, enter:

echo 60000 > /proc/sys/dev/raid/speed_limit_min

OR

sysctl -w dev.raid.speed_limit_min=60000

If you want to override the default settings you could add these two lines to /etc/sysctl.conf:

dev.raid.speed_limit_min = 60000dev.raid.speed_limit_max = 200000

Bitmap Option

Bitmaps optimize rebuild time after a crash, or after removing and re-adding a device.

You may of come across this error like us when running the command rm -rf *, fortunately there is a workaround that should help:-

find . -name ‘test-*’ | xargs rm

In the above example the command will forcefully delete all of the files in the current directory that begin with test-. You can replace the parameter test-* with anything you like. You can also use * if you want to simply remove all the files

find . -name ‘*’ | xargs rm

Hopefully by running these commands will help you remove the files you want without getting stuck with the error.

vi /etc/default/xendomains and comment out #XENDOMAINS_SAVE=/var/lib/xen/save

These tweeks should make XEN start at system startup and also create the bridge we need for the DomUs. Please note that rc3.d could be rc2.d depending on your runlevel, check with the command runlevel at the prompt.

As newer versions of XEN can use the system bridge rather than its own script we need to edit the network configuration to invoke our new bridge. Firstly create our new bridge interface. Replace the IP values with your settings.

As newer versions of XEN can use the system bridge rather than its own script we need to edit the network configuration to invoke our new bridge. Firstly create our new bridge interface. Replace the IP values with your settings.

In order to let Outlook clients such as 2010, 2013 to automatically set up your account and apply the correct settings, an Autodiscovery SRV record now needs to be added. In particular with Outlook 2016 this is now mandatory otherwise you can’t use it.

If you are using the WHM management suite and have access to edit the domains then you can easily accomplish this by following the steps below.

1. Open WHM and login.
2. Click on DNS Functions then scroll down to the domain you want to edit
3. Now where is says Add New Entries, add the following into the first section:

_autodiscover._tcp

4. No need to edit the TTL records but you can of course if you want to, the is default 14400 seconds.
5. Next choose SRV where is says to select.
6. Enter the priority:

0

7. Enter the Weight:

0

8. Enter the Port as:

443

9. Enter the FQDN of the exchange server that your host has given you with the full stop at the end:

outlook.domains.com.

10. Save the settings.

11. Now give it a little time to update then you can use this useful tool from Microsoft:

https://testconnectivity.microsoft.com/

12. If you dont want to use Microsofts tools then run this in a command prompt (Windows)

Starting your own SHOUTcast radio station can be just a dream for a lot of people due to the potentially expensive equipment required to get up and running, however these days it can be very simple. There are various ways of starting a radio station, the most popular method today is using the internet.

The majority of the population today have access to the internet on some sort of device, where it be a laptop, tablet or smart phone, this opens up so much potential to reach your audience without the need to transmit accross the airwaves.

In order to get your radio station up and running will require some key ingredients that when put together gives you scope for so much poential.

You will need:-

A SHOUTcast Server – the hub where your listeners will connect to and listen in.

Winamp – the source plays the music from your desktop/laptop machine.

SHOUTcast DSP plugin – a plugin for Winamp which converts the music and connects to the SHOUTcast server so your listeners can hear.

A good internet connection

Music of course!

We will quickly cover the items required

SHOUTcast Server

A mentioned this is basically the hub where you as the broadcaster will upload your music to, which in turn allows the listeners to also connect to and listen to your stream. You can purchase your SHOUTcast server from TidyHosts, there are a number of packages to choose from.

Winamp

This is the software that needs to be installed on your desktop/laptop. You can download from http://www.winamp.com/ Once installed you then need to create your playlist that will be streamed for your audience to listen to. Of course you are not limited to files, you can connect external equipment such as CDJs and peform live shows. Please visit http://forums.winamp.com for more details on how to setup your equipment for use with Winamp.

SHOUTcast DSP plugin

Now that you have the server and Winamp installed its time to get the plugin that actually encodes and sends your stream to the server. Without this vital of software you wont be streaming anytime soon. You can download the plugin from http://www.shoutcast.com/BroadcastNow There is a useful guides on the forums at http://forums.winamp.com that show you how to install and setup the plugin for use on your machine.

A Good Internet Connection

If you plan to stream at a good quality bitrate such as 320 kbps then you will need a good and stable internet connection. We cannot stress enough how important this is. If your connection is known for drops then you will quickly lose your audience. The automated SHOUTcast directory may block the listing in the directory if it detects flapping so before starting out make sure this in good shape.

Music of Course

You have got everything ready, server is up, PC is up, all you need now is quality music for your listeners. What you stream is entirely up to you, make sure it is clear and can be easily heard. Having your input volume to low will put listeners off whislt having it too high will cause distortion so test with friends before starting off. Once you have decided what you want to broadcast, try and do some online advertising using social media such as Facebook and Twitter etc. Remember, word of mouth is a great advertising tool, produce a great show and the listeners will increase before you know it!